Our community facilities are at risk!

Our Civic Centre is one of the busiest community facilities in Clackmannanshire. It is home to many local groups. Martial arts, Wrestling, fitness classes and slimming groups. Used by Tullibody football club, it houses the changing areas for the 2 full size football pitches and a small training pitch. It provides facilities for a number of local community groups and caters for the over 50’s and the under 5’s to meet throughout the day, evenings and weekends. It has substantial space for public and private functions. It is home to our public library, Tullibody History group and our Heritage Centre.

Our Civic Centre is a highly valued community asset

Councillors pledged not to build a new joint school campus on our public park at a meeting on 25th June 2015 in order to save our park. Now, In this formal consultation stage we have been given 2 new options.
Option A, build on the current Abercromby site or Option B, build on the Civic Centre site.

We don’t want to lose our Civic Centre! Building the new campus on Option B would not only mean the loss of Tullibody's only substantial community/sports facilities but also the children’s play park and a large section of our greenspace!
Nevertheless, If we decide to choose Option A, the council have threatened to sell the Civic Centre site for development regardless! Offering inadequate community space within the new school and rendering the civic centre “surplus to requirements”  

The proposal for this new “Locality Hub” have yet to be confirmed, but what is stated in the consultation document is that both public services and community facilities would be included in the new school campus development. These community facilities will be shared predominantly by Abercromby Primary School and St. Bernadette’s Primary School. "creating a campus would increase access by the school populations to the civic amenities" . However, not all of these new facilities will be accessible to the public through the day! "assembly hall and meeting spaces within a primary school can be more easily used by local groups in the evening" These shared spaces would only be available once the schools have closed! Our growing community would now only have limited access to community rooms and sports hall. Evening only access alienates our daytime community groups,  older generation, mother & toddlers. We don't believe this is either a satisfactory solution or a suitable replacement to the substantial facilities we currently have. As Tullibody is the second largest town in Clackmannanshire with approx. 9,000 residents we cannot and will not settle for anything less than we currently have.

But, the Civic Centre has been neglected over the years by Clackmannanshire Council, and we believe this has been deliberate.  The council have allowed the building to fall into an unsatisfactory standard,  through lack of funding and only basic maintenance.

Since this is the case, the council now want to get rid of this facility in order to save money and profit from the sale of the land. Clackmannanshire Council state that the centre operates at only 28%  We believe that operation figure is closer to 50% usage and with a dedicated management team and adjusted opening hours it would have the potential to be much higher.

We ask Clackmannanshire Council to reconsider their proposal to sell the land at the Civic Centre. Build the school on the Abercromby site and leave our community facilities alone.  Allow the people of Tullibody to take over the Civic Centre and with help from the community empowerment bill remove this burden from the council. Through funding and grants we can bring it up to the high standard that our growing town deserves.